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Over the past few months, I’ve been dejected to see a large number of articles that were politics-adjacent, but otherwise thoughtful and topical, get flagged an

Over the past few months, I’ve been dejected to see a large number of articles that were politics-adjacent, but otherwise thoughtful and topical, get flagged and remain that way. The mods told us that HN is not supposed to be a news aggregator. Begrudgingly, I accepted the justification, since fostering intelligent discussion in a diverse community can be incredibly challenging. So… why were the flags on the article covering Hulk Hogan’s (tech-irrelevant) death turned off? The article was flagged, then inexplicably came back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44672329 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44672329 And it's not the first time I've seen this happen with various news fluff. I’ll be frank: I’ve had faith in the mod team in the past, but the lack of consistency is becoming offensive to me. Celebrity gossip is OK, but not most things ICE or Musk related for example, even when there's direct involvement from SV elites? I'm finding it hard to see the throughline here. What am I missing?

tomhow 1y ago
That story spent 9 minutes on the front page. Turning off the flags on a story doesn't mean we want to give it front page exposure (and in that case, we didn't give it front page exposure). It allows people who want to discuss that topic to do so whilst not taking up front page space and also not drawing complaints from people who feel strongly that they want to discuss it. We do the same thing with some of the politics-related topics you're talking about too. The primary consideration is always whether the story contains "significant new information", and another significant consideration is whether the discussion thread is of a reasonably high standard.